Ask any passer-by on any street to spell it out shamanism as well as the result is going to be blank stares. Everybody is surprised to find out that shamanism isn’t a religion though the oldest spiritual and problem-solving technology on this planet. A lot more surprising could be the discovery that it is the precursor to the majority of major world religions, including the Judaeo-Christian and Buddhist traditions, which continues to be practised on every inhabited continent in the world not less than 40,000 many possibly greatly longer. Historically, shamanism would be a significant survival tool of prehistoric humans. Our hunter-gatherer forbears decorated the stone walls of caves and cliffs worldwide with carved and painted images drawn from shamanic experience. We not live in caves or in very small communities whose members are typical known to us. Many of us live far longer, healthier lives than our ancient ancestors, but our brains, that part of us competent at fearing the dark and requesting the help of things unseen, hasn’t changed in almost 25 % of a million years. What made the uncertain lives of prehistoric people a whole lot easier works today because, although the world could have changed, fundamentally we haven’t.
Ask that of a shaman is as well as the question may evoke a few words about Native American ‘medicine men’ or maybe the word ‘witchdoctor’. The truth is, exactly what a shaman is and does is just explained. In the Siberian Tungus language which produced the word, ‘shaman’ means ‘the one that sees’ and identifies somebody capable of making a ‘journey’ to alternate realities while in an altered state of consciousness to meet and assist spirit helpers. Just what the shaman ‘sees’, what she realises, with this example of meeting spirits is always that there is no separation between something that is: no separation between me writing so you reading these words, from your dog and cat, between life and death, between this apparently material reality as well as the non-material realities in the spirit worlds. This idea of ‘oneness’ is usual currency in contemporary culture and increasingly given credence by certain quantum physicists working with sub atomic theory, regarded course it’s a predominantly physical, rather than a spiritual, oneness that such scientists are attempting to describe. However, where many of us could only consider the notion of ‘oneness’, shaman’s actually live it over the experience with the shamanic ‘journey’ and direct, personal interaction with spirit.
Described as a ‘breakthrough in plane’, in physiological terms your journey begins since the shaman redirects the main cognitive process through the left cerebral hemisphere from the brain right, from the corpus collosum – that’s, from the structuring, organising hemisphere, towards the visualising, sensing one. From the overwhelming majority of traditions around the globe this ‘breakthrough’ will likely be assisted through percussive sound, such as drumming, rattling or clapping. Although hallucinogens, for example ayahuasca, are widely advertised in the western world as a method to aid alter consciousness, the truth is only about 10% of traditional shamans use plants in this manner. Metaphysically, the journey begins if the shaman’s consciousness shifts through the here and now and enters worlds visible and then her. These worlds, which vary each and every culture and tradition around the globe, are called ‘alternate reality’, ‘the an entire world of the spirits’, or ‘non-ordinary reality’. Some traditions call shamans ‘the walker involving the worlds’ since they’re the bridge between ‘here’ and ‘there’.
Although often considered primitive or seen as ‘religion’ of less developed peoples and cultures, San Pedro shamanism is both subtle and paradoxical. The ‘worlds’ of shamanic journeys are utterly real – they exist and can be felt, smelt and experienced as clearly simply because this ‘ordinary’ reality. At the same time they are qualitative spaces, states for being that reflect and secure the basis for the shaman’s journey – to request help, healing or information from the spirits. Contemporary research within the cognitive sciences suggests that the human mental abilities are hardwired to determine the ‘unseen’ as well as the mystical; even the Lower, Middle and Upper Worlds in the shaman – translated into Hell, Earth and Heaven in later tripartite cosmologies – are seemingly a natural part of human perception.
And in addition, among the questions most frequently asked by students being introduced to shamanism is, “What are spirits?”. Perhaps because Western society has mostly avoided considering spirituality for many generations we lack a clear, objective knowledge of things like spirits. Currently it’s a one-size-fits-all word encompassing entities, energies, ghosts, angels, ancestors, the undead, elves, fairies; this list is seemingly endless. Personally, I have two understandings of the notion of spirit even though the 2 coincide, they may not be the identical but they work with me. The Core Shamanic, or Western, tradition which underpins my own, personal practice and teaching, describes spirits within everything exists. I’m a spirit currently inhabiting an actual physical body to be able to possess a human experience. The spirits I meet on my ‘journeys’ are dis-embodied and therefore offer an existential overview unavailable in my opinion, but we’re essentially the same: particles of infinite universal energy, fragments from the Great Spirit. All of us are derived from this energy, exist inside and resume it. It is actually living this perspective allowing a shaman to try out the lack of separation between items that ordinary-reality considers very separate indeed, such as life and death or health and disease.
My second comprehension of spirit is a bit more psychological and archetypal and was plain and simply explained by CG Jung in the autobiography ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’. Describing his personal expertise of spirit helpers Jung wrote, “Philemon… brought you will find me the important insight that you have things within the psyche i tend not to produce, but which produce themselves and also have their particular life. Philemon represented a force which was not myself.” This is a beautifully lucid explanation of precisely how it can feel to get with spirit after a shamanic journey. More prosaically, I describe the process of journeying to my students as having one’s imagination harnessed and directed by something external.
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